Lit Hub Daily: April 18, 2023

• “But where’s its anus?” Jaime Green on how (and why) we speculate about alien lifeforms. | Lit Hub Science

• 24 new books to brighten up your April. | The Hub

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• Ramona Asubel talks to Jane Ciabattari about families, extinction, and gene-edited animals. | Lit Hub In Conversation

• “Southern writers are tearing holes in the veils, recasting what’s considered speakable.” Katy Simpson Smith on writing a Southern woman louder than herself. | Lit Hub

• Valerie Fridland considers My Cousin Vinny, the Queen’s English, and the clash of class culture in the social world of language. | Lit Hub History

• “Among the journalists, there was a sense of claustrophobic mania, of being on the brink, even before the profound disappointment of the tarot session.” Lauren Oyler (begrudgingly) goes on the Goop cruise. | Harper’s Magazine

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• This year’s International Booker Prize shortlist has been announced. | The Guardian

•  Wait? Are you telling us one of the great chroniclers of adventure and derring-do, David Grann, gets put off by a few bugs? | The Wall Street Journal

• Seventy years after John Steinbeck visited Le Sirenuse, the Amalfi Coast hotel continues beckoning literary types with a springtime writers’ retreat. | Air Mail

• Automatic e-book updates are a reminder that you don’t really own your digital media. | The New York Times

Also on Lit Hub: Molly Prentiss on trading chaos for quiet in hopes of writing • A reading list of provocative feminist history • Read from Stephen Buoro’s debut novel, The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa